Abstract Sports are social, and the sociability of sports (e.g. individual experiences, group cohesion or generalised social trust) and its consequences (e.g. enjoyment, inclusion, or social capital) depends on the social networks in sports teams. In this study we investigate various types of social networks in sports—strong and weak—for boys and girls. We look at the number of social relations in each team (average degree), how centralised and hierarchical teams are, and how each team clusters and consists of subgroups. We hypothesise that: (i) Boys’ and girls’ teams differ in number of social relations, (ii) Boys’ social networks are more hierarchical than girls’ networks, and (iii) Girls’ teams are more clustered than boys’ teams. Network data from 387 adolescent athletes on 30 sports teams in football, handball, cross-country skiing and biathlon were collected with an electronic survey-questionnaire. The results reveal large differences in network structures between teams. We find that the total number of social relations is higher in girls’ teams, that there are small gender differences with respect to networks' hierarchies, and that girls’ networks cluster more than boys’ networks.

中文翻译：

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有组织的青年运动中的社交网络和性别

摘要 体育是社交性的，体育的社交性（例如个人体验、群体凝聚力或广义社会信任）及其后果（例如享受、包容或社会资本）取决于运动队中的社交网络。在这项研究中，我们调查了男孩和女孩在体育运动中的各种社交网络——强和弱。我们看每个团队的社会关系数量（平均程度），团队的集中度和等级，以及每个团队如何集群和由子组组成。我们假设：(i) 男队和女队的社会关系数量不同，(ii) 男队的社交网络比女队的网络更有层次，(iii) 女队比男队更聚集。来自 30 个足球、手球、通过电子调查问卷收集越野滑雪和冬季两项。结果揭示了团队之间网络结构的巨大差异。我们发现女孩团队的社会关系总数更高，网络层次结构方面的性别差异很小，并且女孩网络比男孩网络聚集更多。